AUBURN - Audiences don't normally stomp, clap and shout while someone is reading a story, but Robert Djed Snead didn't mind.

In fact, he encouraged the crowd at the Booker T. Washington Community Center Thursday to get involved.

Snead, a professional storyteller from Rochester, was the centerpiece of the annual Juneteenth Celebration, a program that commemorates the first days of freedom for many of America's slaves in 1865.

The event was sponsored by the Auburn Human Rights Commission and included the reading of several essays by students from local elementary schools, the presentation of several awards and Snead's program.

More than 200 students from Owasco, Casey Park, Herman Avenue and other schools packed the center's gymnasium to watch the show.

Snead, a Lyons native enthralled the crowd with his storytelling. Using a variety of tales, many of which were interactive to get the audience involved, Snead related his stories to the struggles blacks faced during slavery and their battles with oppression since that time.

“The stories that I tell are in the tradition of Africans who were brought here during the slave trade,” Snead said. “They didn't come here through Ellis Island like a lot of people, so storytelling was - and still is - a way of keeping our sanity,” he said.

Snead began with a story about abolitionist and Rochester resident Frederick Douglass, then told an original one called “Nasty Nathan the No-Good Gnat Who Never Listens to Nobody.”� The story, which teaches a lesson about respect, has recently been published as a children's book.

Snead closed with a tale that he said was a crowd favorite, based on an Aesop fable, titled “Mr. Grasshopper and the Ants.” During the story, Snead had the audience clap, sing and dance, and at the end of the tale the crowd roared its approval.

“The moral of that story is that all of us have something to give,” he said. “It could be working in the fields, or pushing a plow, or it might be just making people smile. If we value all of those things, then we become a whole community.”

Snead a member of the Blackstorytelling League of Rochester, is also active in the creation of historical re-enactments. This week, he said, he will travel to Sugar Grove, Pa., to recreate the 1854 Anti-Slavery Convention that took place there.

Snead, a Lyons native, enthralled the crowd with his storytelling. Using a variety of tales, many of which were interactive to get the audience involved, Snead related his stories to the struggles blacks faced during slavery and their battles with oppression since that time.

“The stories that I tell are in the tradition of Africans who were brought here during the slave trade,” Snead said. “They didn't come here through Ellis Island like a lot of people, so storytelling was - and still is - a way of keeping our sanity,” he said.

Snead began with a story about abolitionist and Rochester resident Frederick Douglass, then told an original one called “Nasty Nathan the No-Good Gnat Who Never Listens to Nobody.” The story, which teaches a lesson about respect, has recently been published as a children's book.

Snead closed with a tale that he said was a crowd favorite, based on an Aesop fable, titled “Mr. Grasshopper and the Ants.” During the story, Snead had the audience clap, sing and dance, and at the end of the tale the crowd roared its approval.

“The moral of that story is that all of us have something to give,” he said. “It could be working in the fields, or pushing a plow, or it might be just making people smile. If we value all of those things, then we become a whole community.”

Snead, a member of the Blackstorytelling League of Rochester, is also active in the creation of historical re-enactments. This week, he said, he will travel to Sugar Grove, Pa., to recreate the 1854 Anti-Slavery Convention that took place there.